In the words of the late Derek Ager, ‘… fossils have been and still
are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which
they occur …’1

Why is this so?

Dating rocks and fossils

Figure
1. Click here for
a larger image. Location map for the Newvale No. 2 Coal Mine, north of Sydney
on the east coast of Australia.

Uniformitarian geologists
and evolutionary paleontologists believe that as countless creatures lived and
died over millions of years of Earth history, some were buried in slowly accumulating
sediments and then fossilised. Accumulated genetic changes over millions of years
supposedly resulted in the evolution of new species, genera and families. So when
fossils are found in sedimentary rock layers, they are identified within the context
of where they fit in the evolutionary ‘tree of life’, and a millions-of-years
‘age’ is therefore assigned to the fossil and the rock accordingly.2

In recent years a variety of techniques have been developed
to ‘date’ some rocks and minerals using the decay of radioactive elements
in them. These methods include potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, uranium-thorium-lead
and samarium-neodymium dating. They are used, for example, on layers of volcanic
rocks above and below fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers. Thus these methods,
though not directly dating the fossils, have often ‘confirmed’ the
millions of years ages assigned to the rocks and fossils by their interpretation
within the uniformitarian and evolutionary framework.

The
only radioactive dating method that could be directly applied to many fossils
is radiocarbon or carbon-14 (14C) dating. However, because radiocarbon
decays relatively rapidly, it is only useful in practice up to about 50,000 years.3
Thus most fossils, being regarded as millions of years old, are never tested for
radiocarbon, because they are not supposed to have any left.

A fossilised tree stump

Figure 2. General view of the fossilised tree stump (scale bar in cm). The
shiny coalified bark around the perimeter can be clearly seen.

Figure
3.Click here for
a larger image. The local geological column for the upper portion of the Newcastle
Coal Measures showing where the Great Northern coal seam occurs.

Among
the sedimentary rock layers, some of the most significant are coal beds. These
can be tens of metres thick and stretch for many hundreds of square kilometres.
They consist of the broken remains—leaves, twigs, bark, logs, etc.—of
countless millions of trees of many varieties. Usually the process of fossilising
this vegetation debris obliterates most of the recognisable features of these
individual components, as the whole buried mass is transformed into coal.

However,
sometimes components can be identified—for example, fossilised tree stumps
sitting on top of coal beds. Such a fossilised tree stump was found by miners
in the Newvale No. 2 (underground) Coal Mine north of Sydney, Australia (Figure
1). A portion of it was saved by one of the miners (Figure 2).

One
of the major coal beds exploited in the Newvale No. 2 Coal Mine is the Great Northern
Seam, near the top of the sequence of rock units known collectively as the Newcastle
Coal Measures (Figure 3) within the Sydney Basin. Based on the plant
fossils found in them, these coal beds (including the associated mudstone in which
the stump was found) have been designated Upper Permian, which uniformitarian
geologists would therefore assign to a period of Earth’s history around
250 million years ago.4,5

Figure 4 shows the relative position of
the fossilised tree stump when it was found, surrounded by a 150 mm (almost 6
inches) thick layer of mudstone sitting directly on top of the coal (Great Northern
Seam). That portion of the fossilised tree stump recovered has a diameter of 110
mm (almost 4½ inches) and stands 100 mm (about 4 inches) high (Figure 2 and
Figure 5). A shiny thin ‘skin’ encompasses the
outer perimeter (Figure 2, Figure 5 and Figure
6) and represents the original tree bark, which upon burial was coalified.
In contrast, the former wood has been silicified (literally turned to stone by
impregnation with silica), though it is dull black from still being carbon-rich
(Figure 6).

Radiocarbon (14C) analyses

Figure
4.Click here for
a larger image. Diagram to illustrate the relative position of the fossilised
tree stump sitting on top of the Great Northern coal seam (not drawn to scale).

Small pieces of the coalified bark and the silicified
wood immediately underneath it were sent for radiocarbon (14C) analyses
to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Boston (USA), a reputable, internationally-recognized
commercial laboratory. The laboratory staff were not told exactly where the samples
came from, or their supposed evolutionary age, to ensure that there would be no
resultant bias. This laboratory uses the more sensitive accelerator mass spectrometry
(AMS) technique for radiocarbon analysis, now recognized as producing the most
reliable results, even on minute quantities of carbon in samples.

The
radiocarbon results are listed in Table 1. There was detectable
radiocarbon in the coalified bark, yielding a supposed 14C ‘age’
of 33,700 ± 400 years BP (before present). On the other hand, the small quantity
of carbon extracted from the silicified wood sample was insufficient to yield
a finite 14C ‘age’, so the result could only be reported
as >48,800 years BP, beyond the detection limits. Of course, the wood inside
a tree stump would not be >15,100 years older than the bark enclosing it. So
the 14C ‘age’ of the bark places an ‘age’ limit
on the immediately underlying silicified wood.

Of course,
if the wood really were 250 million years old as is supposed, one should not be
able to obtain a finite age from radiocarbon—all detectable 14C
should have decayed away in a fraction of that alleged time.

Objections

Figure
5. Another view of the fossilised tree stump (scale bar in cm). The shiny
coalified bark can again be clearly seen, as can the dull silicified wood within
the stump.

The most obvious objection that might be raised against these
radiocarbon results by sceptics uncomfortable with the implications is that the
minute quantity of radiocarbon detected in this fossilised tree stump is due to
contamination.
6
Such a criticism
is unjustified, and by implication casts a slur on the radiocarbon laboratory’s
Ph.D. scientific staff. As qualified routine practitioners, they understand the
problem with contamination, and how to avoid it in sample preparation. Yet they
reported these analyses as genuine in situ radiocarbon (14C).
Furthermore, the last column of Table 1 lists the d13CPDB
results, which are consistent with the analysed carbon in the fossilised tree
stump representing organic carbon from wood, not from contamination.
7

Another objection is that acceptance of these
results as genuine 14C ‘ages’ is based on bias, incompetence
or ignorance.8 However, those who
would make such accusations in reality reject these results primarily because
such 14C ‘ages’ ‘cannot possibly’ be obtained
from a fossilised tree stump sitting in a layer of ‘250 million years old’
Upper Permian mudstone. Of course, such pronouncements are based solely on a rock-and-fossil
dating scheme derived from evolutionary and uniformitarian beliefs, not from some
independent, objective scientific standard.

Conclusions

Figure
6. A close-up of the fossilised tree stump (scale bar in cm). Not only can
the shiny coalified bark be seen, but also the growth rings in the dull silicified
interior wood.

Within the Creation/Flood framework of Earth history, the
Flood occurred about 4,500 years ago. Therefore, even though this tree stump must
have grown before the Flood (to be then buried and fossilised in sediments laid
down by the Flood) there cannot have been more than about 5,000 years at most
since it died.

However, a 33,700 ± 400 years BP radiocarbon
‘age’ for this fossilised tree stump is neither inconsistent nor unexpected.
A stronger magnetic field before, and during, the Flood would have shielded the
Earth more strongly from incoming cosmic rays,9
so there would have been much less radiocarbon in the atmosphere then, and thus
much less in the vegetation. Since the laboratory calculated the 14C
‘age’ based on the assumption that the level of atmospheric radiocarbon
in the past has been roughly the same as the level in 1950, the resultant radiocarbon
‘age’ is much greater than the true age.10

On the other hand, a 33,700 ± 400 years BP radiocarbon
‘age’ emphatically conflicts with, and casts doubt upon, the evolutionary
fossil and uniformitarian rock ‘age’ of 250 million years for this
fossilised tree stump. Clearly, the radiocarbon dating method, although demonstrating
that the specimen cannot be millions of years old, has not provided its
true age.11 However, correctly
understood, this radiocarbon analysis is totally consistent with the biblical
account of a young Earth and a recent global Flood, as recorded in the book of
Genesis by the Creator Himself.

Footnotes

D.V. Ager, ‘Fossil frustrations’,
New Scientist100:425, 1983.

The
millions of years interpretation needs to be separated from the reality of the
sequence of rock layers containing fossils that are stacked on top of one another.
Creationist geologists do not
deny that there is a genuine geological record. They recognise that the fossils
and rocks are usually found in a particular order, but reject the millions of
years imposed on that order. Instead, catastrophic geological processes during
the global Flood of Genesis can adequately account for this geological record.

Radiocarbon
(14C) has a half-life (a measure of the rate of decay) of about 5730
years. After about 10 half-lives there will be so little 14C left that
it is undetectable. So about 50,000 years is regarded as the upper limit of the
radiocarbon dating method.
This is not to say that 14C
ages quoted in the secular literature all represent real ages, because there are
problems with the method (see later in this article).

‘In radiocarbon dating the date depends on the amount of radiocarbon left
in a sample. If only 1% is left the date corresponds to an age of about 37,000
years; if only 0.5% remains, to about 42,000 years; if only 0.1%, to about 51,000.
Therefore labs which quote ages of 37–42 thousand years are finding between
1% and 0.1% of C-14. This is approximately consistent with finding none
at all, given that some error is inevitably involved. That is why some of the
dates are quoted as being greater than some particular age. Where “finite”
ages are obtained and quoted, it is probably because a minute amount of
contamination, say at the 0.2% level, by modern substances — dust, fungal
spores, etc.—has happened and could not be removed. Anyone working in the
field understands this. For more recent dates the effect of 0.2% contamination
is negligible, but it is in fact the limitation to measuring older dates than
about 30–40 thousand years.’

It is worth noting that according to this expert testimony, Professor Hedges would
thus have to accept that this fossilised tree stump with a 14C ‘age’
of 33,700 ± 400 years BP has greater than 1% radiocarbon left, so that the
effect of even 0.2% contamination would be ‘negligible’. It is thus
an acceptable 14C ‘age’, confirmed by Oxford University’s
radiocarbon expert!
Note that with the previous study also, precautions were taken to exclude 14C due to contamination.

d13CPDB
denotes the measured difference of the ratio of 13C/12C
(both stable isotopes) in the sample compared to the PDB (Pee Dee Belemnite) standard—a
fossil belemnite (a shellfish related to octopuses and cuttlefish) in the Pee
Dee Formation in the USA. The units used are parts per thousand, written as ‰
or per mil (compared with parts per hundred, written as % or per cent). Organic
carbon from the different varieties of life give different characteristic d13C
values.

Professor
R. Hedges also wrote in the same letter about my previous article:

‘The writer of the article was either ignorant or prejudiced or probably
both.’

Roy Goodwin, Chief Technician
in the Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University, England, likewise wrote
on January 26, 1998 to Mr Jack Lewis:

‘It’s
always difficult for a scientist to comment on a supposedly scientific paper written
by a religious fundamentalist who believes in the literal truth of the chronology
of biblical creation…. When confronted with this article by A. Snelling,
a scientist would argue that something has gone drastically wrong with the field
and/or laboratory work and would then propose detailed scientific tests to try
to understand the chronological contradictions described in the paper.’

Also,
the Flood buried much carbon. The stable 12C would thus have not been
totally replaced in the biosphere after the Flood, whereas 14C would
have been regenerated in the atmosphere (from nitrogen). So comparing today’s
14C/12C with the 14C/12C in pre-Flood
material would yield too high a calibration, resulting in ‘ages’ far
too large.

Nevertheless,
the results of this investigation confirm that radiocarbon is found in fossil
wood at deeper levels in the geological record, as should be expected based on
the premise that the wood was buried and fossilised during the global Genesis
Flood.

Furthermore, it may yet be possible, once enough data
is available, to recalibrate the radiocarbon ‘clock’ based on a stronger
magnetic field, lower cosmic ray influx and thus less 14C production
in the past, plus the effects of the Flood suddenly burying so much organic carbon.
Investigations are continuing.